Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web

Chapter 15. Fusing the "Me" in Social Media and the "We" in the Social Web

The evolution of media and communications is perpetual and timeless.

Once we put these lessons and insights into practice we truly graduate into apprentices of new media.

But before we do so, there's an important element in the socialization of media that can't go undisclosed: the socialization of media starts with you and me. Let's spend one chapter together exploring and unraveling the potential "butterfly effect."

The butterfly effect is an example made popular in the 1980s and taken from chaos theory that describes how the fluttering of a butterfly's wings may be the initial cause that sets off events that result in a large storm. In reference to the Social Web, it is a potentially chaotic effect created by something seemingly insignificant, whereby a small change in one part of a complex system can have a large effect somewhere else.^[44] That "somewhere" else could have devastating effects on you and/or the brand you represent.

It sounds alarming, but this is not science fiction, nor is it yet another essay on "The Top 10 Secrets of Social Media." I need your attention as we move forward together, as our journey is only just beginning.

CASTING A DIGITAL SHADOW&YOUR REPUTATION PRECEDES YOU

You will be googled....

This couldn't be any truer. This might make you smirk, but go google yourself.

View the results as if through the eyes of a stranger, a business prospect, a recruiter, an HR professional, your current ...